Brut McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

Now there is seemingly more collaboration going on in the workplace than ever before.

People are working and talking across teams and within teams using a wide array of communication

channels.

As a result, employees, managers, and CEOs alike can feel pulled in a ton of different directions

by a ton of different requests and find their actual productivity shot to pieces as a result.

By guest figure, there had to be a better way for folks to work together and interview

the most efficient collaborators to find out what they did differently to get back up to

a quarter of their collaborative time.

The name is Rob Cross.

He's a professor of leadership, a business consultant, and the author of Collaboration Overload.

Rob and I began our conversation with a big picture overview of the organizational

and individual factors that are driving the problem of collaboration overload.

We then shifted to talking about the concrete tactics he learned from efficient collaborators

like help others avoid getting pulled into every conversation and project.

We discussed how to limit the productivity-sapping power of meetings by scheduling reflective

time and ways to put more buffer between you and those who ask you to collaborate, including

creating a transparent clearinghouse of priorities.

We then discussed how to reduce collaboration overload and communication, manage people's

expectations for response times, and identify the micrancesters that may be contributing

to your burnout.

Let's talk about the show's over, check it out, it's at aweb.islashcollaboration.

...